During this relatively quiet time, the Big Ten began to analyze the
college sports landscape and attempted to determine what was ahead of
the curve that their rival conferences weren’t seeing. They played game
theory and asked themselves what would be both the obvious and
unintended consequences if they expanded again. They eventually came to
the realization that there was far more risk in defending the status quo
than being proactive and making a new acquisition. What might not have
made a lot of sense fifteen years ago made imminent sense now. For the
Big Ten, it became clear that it wasn’t a question of whether the
conference should expand anymore, but rather what school they should
add.

So the Big Ten decided to throw the college football landscape into disarray in a preemptive strike to protect itself? Dick Cheney approves.

And here all this time I was thinking that this was just a naked cash grab.